


You Break Me Down

by audrarose



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:08:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audrarose/pseuds/audrarose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So awhile ago I wrote kissing-pollen fic called <a href="http://audrarose.livejournal.com/173887.html"> The Monroe</a> in which Kris takes a pill that is very much not tylenol, and then proceeds to kiss a few people, mostly Adam. This is the smutty aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Break Me Down

The morning after is weird.

Kris tells Adam it won't be, and he means it, too, but that's before he finds himself mumbling his way through the WQKL interview while half-paralyzed by a blinding hangover, interrupted only by a painful jolt every time Adam's shoulder brushes his as he reaches past the mike to grab his coffee. Adam's wearing some kind of soft, black hoodie that conducts body heat and apparently pure adrenaline, shooting it straight into Kris's bloodstream so his stomach does a high-jump.

Considering Kris's fragile condition, jumping is a very bad thing.

"Is there any way you could you not do that?" Kris asks, finally, during a commercial. He keeps his voice down so his skull doesn't implode.

"Do what?" Adam asks. Then he leans forward, right into Kris's face, and suddenly skull implosion is the least of Kris's worries. In a rush, he remembers the way Adam leaned forward to kiss him the night before and for one wild, breathless second, he thinks maybe Adam's going to do it again.

Then Adam makes a swipe at his bangs and squints at his own reflection in Kris's mirrored sunglasses.

"Oh, crap, what did I do to my hair this morning?" he asks. "Why didn't you tell me I was sticking up on only one side? I look like a freaking cockatiel."

Kris doesn't answer because his brain's about to shatter, while also helpfully registering the fact that Adam said a word that sounded like _cock_. He lets Danny take the rest of his questions and sulks until it's time to leave.

 

**

By the time the bus comes to get them, Kris is ready to put the whole ridiculous night behind him, along with the entire state of Michigan, but then Matt brushes past him as he's shoving his stuff onto a storage shelf. Just one inhalation of Matt's peppermint soap produces a high-definition, 3D memory of razor-stubble against his lips and Matt's hand on his back, along with the sincere desire to dissolve rapidly through the floor. Kris grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes.

"Oh, God."

Matt turns. "What?"

"Dude. Wow. I'm sorry. For... oh, God. Everything."

"What are you talking about?" Matt looks puzzled.

"You know. Last night. The _bar_." And possibly his entire life up to that point, but who's counting.

"Seriously, you're still thinking about that?" Matt laughs and turns around to cram his duffel bag into a storage bench. "No worries. It's all good."

"Really?" Kris takes a deep breath in gratitude that Matt isn't going to be a dick about the whole snuggling thing, and pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. "Thanks. Thanks, man."

Matt straightens. "Here," Matt smiles. He holds out a bottle of Tylenol and rattles it a little. "I thought you might need this."

Kris stares at the bottle for a second. "Oh. Okay, I get it. You're funny. Ha." Kris still reaches out to take it, because stupid jokes aside, he really could use about three bottles of the stuff for his hangover. Matt's grip around the bottle tightens. When Kris looks up at him, Matt is smiling like the Grinch.

"Come on. Don't you want to _share_?"

Kris hopes Matt chokes himself laughing.

**

"Matt's a dick."

"Okay," Megan says. "And in other news?"

Kris falls onto the bench were Megan is eating mini-wheats with Splenda out of a mug and puts his head on the table.

At the first rest-stop, he'd lurched off the bus to buy a six-pack of Monster and then popped one open while standing in front of the cash register to wash down three of the pills he'd pried out of Matt's hand. Then he went over to the girls' bus to mope.

He closes his eyes for about two seconds before he starts wondering if Megan is going to act weird about last night, too. He peeks up at her without raising his head. She pulls her knees up to give him more room.

"What's wrong Krissy-face?"

Kris sags back down onto the table. Megan's not going to be weird-weird. Just normal-weird. He can handle that.

"Just please tell me I didn't kiss you, too."

She laughs and almost snorts milk, so Kris sits up to pat her on the back. When she can breathe again, she says, "Trust me. If we'd hooked up? You would remember. And hey, cheer up. You'll never see Monroe-girl again and I don't think snuggling with Matt counts as kissing... Wait." She sits forward suddenly. "You said 'too'. What do you mean 'too'? Who else did you kiss?" Her eyebrows go up and she mouths the word, _Adam_?

Kris doesn't even get a chance to answer, just looks over at her with a woeful glance and she dissolves into laughter.

"Oh, honey, no. No, no, no. You absolutely _did not_. That's too funny!"

"Yeah, it's hilarious. That was the first thing I thought, too." Kris leans his head back and covers his face with his hands. He wonders if he can just stay like that for a few days. After a few seconds, he looks at her through his fingers.

"What?" he asks.

"Well?" she says, still laughing.

"Well _what_?"

"You now possess crucial inside information! You kissed Adam! How was it?"

Stupidly, painfully hot. Kris closes his eyes.

"Humiliating." He shifts around uncomfortably, remembering. "He had to pry me off him."

"Oh, wow. That's harsh." Megan chews and makes it look sympathetic. "You think it's going to be weird now?"

"Oh, no. Not at all. Why would it be." He puts his head on the table. "Fuck."

"That sucks. You guys are friends." She takes another bite, observing him over the rim. "What?"

Kris turns his cheek against the formica and stares at her, feeling pitiful. "Okay, go. Just give it to me."

"What, like a lecture or something?"

"Sure. I can take it. Go ahead."

"Oh, sweet-pea." She pats his shoulder and goes back to her cereal. "You come up with a brand of stupid I haven't tried yet, and then we'll talk."

She smiles at him, then, sitting there lost in her oversized sweats with her hair pulled back and not a trace of make-up on her face, like someone's jailbait little sister and Kris is suddenly really, really glad he was only a partial tool the night before. He leans over and kisses her on the cheek because he's sober this time and it totally doesn't count.

**

Kris spends the rest of the drive losing at Scrabble to Allison's mom, and by the time they get to the Allstate Arena, Kris decides that so what if it's weird. So what if he tried to make out with Adam in a cab and climbed all over him in an elevator. He can act normal, and not like he'd kind of like to do it again, with or without strange chemicals in his bloodstream.

Normal. No problem.

At least until Adam wanders off the other bus in his glasses and cap, with a duffel thrown over his shoulder and a smile for Kris that makes Kris's stomach jump into his throat again.

"Tactical error bugging out of the bus, dude," Adam says. "I think he's done now, but Matt did kind of an immersive performance art piece with all that Tylenol. I know you were trying to avoid him, but you should never have left him alone with your stuff, man. That shit's everywhere."

Kris laughs because he's supposed to, but then Adam reaches out and Kris freezes because Adam is going to touch him. Just a casual arm around his shoulder like he's done a zillion times before, but fuck, Adam's going to _touch_ him, and that makes Kris think about the way Adam touched him in the elevator, how Adam's thigh between his legs made him so freaking hard that if he thinks about it too much he's going to embarrass himself.

In a moment of panic, he slides out of that almost-touch and drops to one knee. He gets really involved in searching for something utterly vital in his back pack, something that takes all of his attention and that he's pretty sure he doesn't currently own.

"Did you lose something?" Adam asks.

His mind, obviously. He keeps his eyes somewhere near Adam's shoes. "No, no... Yes. I'm not sure. I might have to go back and look. You go ahead."

Adam's feet stay where they are. "Yeah, I didn't think it was Matt you were avoiding." Adam's weight shifts like he crossed his arms, and he lets out an annoyed huff of breath. "So you're really going to be like this? Really?" He turns around. "Great. Whatever."

Kris keeps his head bowed until Adam walks away, feeling childish and stupid, but when he changes his mind and looks up to call for Adam to wait up, it's too late.

**

Rehearsal is like middle school with a soundcheck. Kris studiously avoids Adam's gaze, which is nowhere near him anyway, now that Adam's begun a new, exclusive relationship with his iphone. Maybe he's texting the first draft of his novel to Neil or rearranging his playlists into blank verse, but whatever it is, he doesn't look at Kris and doesn't really talk to anyone but Alli. Kris would kind of hate him if he didn't want to tackle him into a wall and bite the tendons in his neck.

"What is wrong with you?" Megan whispers at him, sliding in next to him during Anoop's run-through. "Why is Adam being so bitchy? What did you do to him?'

"What did _I_ do? What happened to no lectures?" Kris hisses back.

"Hey, I understand acting weird, but now you're just being a jerk. Don't make me deal with this, Kristopher, I swear. You will not be happy."

Kris crosses his arms and looks straight ahead at the stage. "Your kid's totally afraid of you, isn't he?"

"Okay, FYI? I am raising my baby to fear God, me and nothing else on this earth, so unless you want to find out how that works ... you will go play nice." She doesn't quite disappear with a thunder-clap and a puff of green smoke, but it's close.

Kris hates Megan now, too, but once the show starts, he grudgingly admits to himself that she has a point.

He tries to suck it up before the final set, but when he approaches Adam in the green room, Kris finds him sitting sprawled out with his headphones in his ears and his sunglasses over his eyes and, for all Kris knows, an actual force field surrounding him, erected simply by virtue of the fact that he is Adam and everyone else is _so_ not.

Well, what-the-fuck-_ever_. Kris sulks through his set.

**

By some miracle of scheduling it's another hotel room night, but Adam says he's meeting friends at Berlin and makes it clear he's going out alone. Kris doesn't care anymore, he just wants to be anywhere Adam isn't, so he grabs his keycard and his duffel bag and closes himself into his room. He takes a shower long enough to get him arrested in California and falls into bed, going blissfully unconscious until after midnight when he hears someone turning the door handle of his room.

And swearing.

"Okay, okay, already. Hold your horses," he mumbles.

He lurches out of bed and shoves his glasses on his face, then pulls open the door to end up blinking across the hall at Lil. She's standing in the doorway of her own room, looking murderous. They stare at each other for a second, and then turn to look down the hallway at Adam, who is two doors away and shoving a keycard into the lock. He grimaces at the result.

"What are you doing, dude?" Kris whispers at him. "That's not your room."

Adam spins to face him. "Well, _obviously_."

He glares at Kris with smeared liner around half-mast eyes and a soft mouth like he gets when he's been drinking, and for a second all Kris can think is that now he knows for certain that Adam's mouth feels as soft as it looks. Then Adam's gaze sweeps down over him and Kris is painfully aware of his sleep-crazy hair and his ragged t-shirt and the track pants falling off his hips. Adam doesn't seem to care, though; he stares at Kris like he's forgotten what they're all doing in the hallway at one in the morning and Kris's face gets a little warmer.

"Uh, hello crazy people?" Lil says. "Some of us are trying to sleep here."

"Well, how am I supposed to rememeber which room is mine?" Adam asks the world, turning away and jabbing his key card viciously into the next lock. "I can't even remember my _phone number_ \--" He shoves at the door ineffectually. "And one of these doors has to open eventually... god-dammit!"

Lil says something threatening that probably isn't physically possible, but Kris doesn't want to take a chance so he darts out into the hallway and grabs Adam's arm. He takes the card from Adam's grasp and hauls him to the right door.

"Oh, we're speaking now?" Adam says, looking down at him imperiously.

"Hey, you tell me," Kris says, shoving the card into the lock. "I'm not the one who --"

"Wait a minute," Adam interrupts, narrowing his eyes as Kris jerks the door open. "How do you know my room number when I don't know my room number?"

"I'm sober?"

Adam snaps his fingers in the general direction of Kris's face, but it's kind of in slow motion and he doesn't manage any sound, so Kris just sighs and pushes Adam in ahead of him. He freezes after he flips the light switch.

"Wow. Were you robbed?"

"I was _organizing_," Adam says. He takes big strides over the clothing strewn across the room.

"By throwing your stuff in the air?" Kris is almost afraid to walk into the room.

"I have a system, thank you very much. God, I need a toothbrush _right now_." He grabs something off the bed and almost but not quite slams himself into the bathroom. Kris listens to the water run for a minute, kneels down by the refrigerator in the mini-bar. He stands after a second and knocks on the bathroom door.

"Dude. Are you going to hurl?"

The door flies open in front of him. The ends of Adam's hair are damp and his face is clean of make-up, but his mouth is still soft, even when he exhales tooth-paste scented air in Kris's face. "No, I am not going to 'hurl'. _I_ know what I can handle."

"Yeah, yeah." Kris hands him the water bottle he liberated from the refrigerator. "But you still need to drink this before you go to sleep. Oh, and here..." he digs in the pocket of his sweats. He holds out his palm. "Take these."

Adam stares at the fuzzy Tylenol in Kris's hand. "You can't be serious." He stares some more. "Oh, _fine_." He swipes the pills from Kris' hand, the brush of his fingers brief and warm, and tosses them back with a gulp of water and a grimace. He flings himself onto the bed and puts his arm over his face, but not so tightly that he can't watch Kris move around the room, dumping an armful of shirts off the bed and closing the bathroom door.

"You don't need to babysit me, you know."

Kris shrugs. "It's okay. I feel like I kind of owe you. For, you know. That night."

"You mean last night?" Adam closes his eyes. "That was a really bad night. I _hated_ that night."

And wow, that hurts, a nasty twist in Kris's chest that doesn't let up until Adam adds, "I thought you were going to end up in a hospital, or die -- I was so _stressed_."

Kris sits down on the other side of the bed. "Yeah, dying would have been kind of stressful for me, too."

Adam narrows his eyes at Kris from beneath his arm, but then he starts laughing, and it sounds like maybe it's at both of them. Something loosens in Kris's chest. He smiles and leans back against the headboard.

"Plus, I think I've apologized for that, like, ten times so far," Kris says. "Maybe let it go."

"Ten times?" Adam asks. "Considering you haven't spoken to me in twelve hours, I really don't think you have."

"Well. In my head." He glances over at Adam, who is staring at him steadily, and doesn't let himself look away, even when he's sure he's probably blushing. "Because I am. Sorry."

"Okay," Adam says, after a second. "I guess that counts." Adam shakes his head. Covers his eyes again. "Oh, fuck. I'm too old for this stuff, honestly. I don't do this anymore, I don't _want_ to do this anymore -- maybe you should just go to bed?"

Kris crosses his arms over his chest and looks down at his out-stretched legs. "Um."

Adam takes his arm off his face and stares at Kris. "You forgot your key, didn't you?"

"On my dresser."

Adam rubs his eyes, but he's still smiling, even if it looks kind of pained. "Oh, God, my life. Okay, you can sleep here, whatever. Why not."

Kris doesn't wait for Adam to change his mind, just puts his glasses on the table and turns off the light before crawling under the blankets. He makes Adam get under the sheet, too, and then Kris curls up on his side so he can watch Adam's profile from beneath his lashes. He wonders why Adam doesn't close his eyes.

"Great," Adam says. "I'm too drunk to sleep."

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Alcohol makes me wired."

Of course it does. Kris closes his eyes.

"Why did you kiss me?" Adam asks abruptly, staring at the ceiling.

Kris blinks. "What --?"

"That night. You know."

Like Kris could forget. "You mean last night?"

"I mean, people kiss me all the time, I get that," Adam continues. He sounds accepting. Resigned to his fate. Then he turns his head to look at Kris. "But why did _you_ kiss me?"

Why isn't Kris kissing him now seems to be the better question, but Kris just swallows. "Well, you are kinda kissable," he says, and tries to make it teasing.

"No 'kinda' about it, cupcake," Adam says, with a sharp glance, but then he looks back up at the ceiling. "Kidding. That was kidding." He shakes his head, and when he talks his voice is too rough. "Except it's not funny, because you kissed me, and now everything's all screwed up..."

"Well, if you'd just stop being weird about it..."

"I'm being weird?" Adam comes up on one elbow. "Me? You're the one displaying his sixth grade social skills... I mean the silent treatment? What is that?"

"I wasn't giving you the --"

"The only one being weird, Kristopher, is you. You."

Adam's using his angry eyes, so Kris comes up on one elbow, too, and gets in Adam's face. Adam's close enough for Kris to see how thick his eyelashes are, how his eyes are kind of bright in the dim light from the window.

"Of course, I'm being weird!" Kris says. "I _kissed_ you."

"So get _over_ it!" Adam takes a breath, stutters to a stop. When he talks again, his voice is soft, and his expression is softer, too. "Can't you get over it? Pretend it never happened?" The corner of his mouth twitches into an uneven grin. "Please?"

It's the 'please' that kills him, that makes him swallow hard because this is Adam, who never asks for anything, even though there isn't much that Kris wouldn't give him.

Kris's chest feels hollow. He shakes his head. "I can't."

Adam takes a funny breath. "Well, fuck you," he says, low, like it's hurting him, like _Kris_ hurt him, so Kris puts his hand on the side of Adam's neck, runs his fingers up into Adam's hair and holds on tight.

"Because it's messing me up," he says, and leans his forehead into Adam's. He slides his hand around to Adam's cheek, rests his thumb against Adam's lower lip. He wants to lick Adam there. Press his teeth there. "I can't stop thinking about it. All the fucking time."

It seems like Adam isn't breathing at all anymore, and he talks like that, too. "If you kiss me again," he starts, but it doesn't sound like a threat. "If you kiss me again, I'm not going to be all noble and shit, and stop you. That was a one-time -- "

Kris doesn't wait for Adam to finish, he leans in and then he's kissing Adam the way he did the other night, the way he's wanted to every minute since. Adam's mouth goes soft and still, and for one awful second he thinks Adam's going to push him away no matter what he said, because he doesn't react, doesn't respond at all.

"Come on, Adam, please..." he whispers, in between kisses. "Please..." The disappointment's so sharp it's about to break him into pieces, but then Adam drags him up, pulls him to his knees so they're facing each other on the bed. "What is it...?" Kris starts, but Adam cups his hands on either side of Kris's face and holds him in place so Adam can kiss him back, _finally_, and it's like Adam wants to absorb him, drink him in and swallow him down.

Kris falls forward in relief, wraps his arms around Adam's body and pulls himself up so Adam has to snake an arm around his waist and drag him close, so Adam's hips bump into his, slide against him. Kris closes his eyes, swamped by want to thick he can feel it in his throat.

"You're hard," Kris mumbles.

Adam laughs weakly against his cheek. "Since you opened your door. Since, since... God, you have no fucking _clue_..."

Except Kris thinks he really does, and for way longer than he wants to admit, so he grabs the hem of Adam's shirt and tugs it up. He pulls the shirt off over Adam's head, leaving Adam blinking at him in surprise.

"If we're going to do this, I want to see you," Kris says.

"Oh, fuck," Adam breathes, but it seems like he's on board with that because he shoves Kris's shirt up his chest. Kris has to lean back and wrestle it off before he can push Adam's pink skull pajama pants off his hips and wriggle out of his own sweats. The first shock of skin on skin is breath-taking, hot with friction, but then Adam's gone, laughing, "Wait, wait," as he leans over to fumble in the drawer beside the bed.

"Oh, the _lube_ you put away," Kris says, groping after him, but Adam's already back.

"Shut up," Adam grins against his mouth and falls back until he's half propped on the headboard with Kris straddling his lap. Then somehow their hips just lock with Adam's hand between them, dripping with something smooth and warm that just keeps getting warmer as Adam slicks it _everywhere_. Kris tips his head back to breathe and hangs onto Adam's shoulders.

"Hey, open your eyes..." Adam says against his neck, licks a stripe beneath his chin. "Watch, baby."

Adam sounds just as wrecked as Kris feels, like he's going to come apart, so Kris tries; he really tries to watch Adam's hand on him, his own clumsy hand on Adam, but all he can do is come.

A few minutes later he remembers enough to kind of vaguely hope that Adam came, too, but he can't get too worked up about it when he's sprawled across Adam's chest, his damp skin cooling in the frigid air-conditioned room and Adam's hip digging into his stomach. He shifts himself higher on Adam's body.

"Stop moving," Adam murmurs, like it's almost too much trouble.

"I can't." Kris shifts his body again. "It's not my fault you're all pointy... maybe you're losing too much weight."

Adam smiles without opening his eyes. "Oh, _flattery_, now? Well played. Are you trying to make me love you forever?"

"That would be nice," Kris says, into Adam's skin.

Adam holds his breath for a second. He tangles his fingers in Kris's hair and holds on tight. "Well, okay, then."

END


End file.
